The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Spin Cycle

Episode Date: March 21, 2021

Jamie Kirchick is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for Tablet magazine. His first book, The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age, was published in 2017, and his next book, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington is forthcoming from Henry Holt.  Erin Jackson has appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and CONAN and just made her Netflix debut as part of Season 2 of Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready. 

This is live from the table, the official podcast of New York's world-famous comedy seller comedy club, coming at you on Sirius XM 99, Raw Dog, and on the Laugh Button Podcast Network, Dan Natterman, here with Noam Dorman. He is the owner of the world-famous comedy seller. We also have Peri Ophel, Ashton Branch. He is the producer of Live from the Table with us. Joining us, Aaron Jackson, comedy seller, regular, at least was, and will be again when we reopen. She's appeared on the late night show

with Seth Meyers, Conan O'Brien, and just made her Netflix debut as part of season two of Tiffany Haddish Presents, They Ready. And she is with us, Erin, and it's been a while since I've laid eyes upon you. I know. Yes, it has. Yes, it has.

Hey, everybody. Hi. Hello, Erin. They Ready is Tiffany Haddish's series that, what exactly is the theme of They Ready? It's a black-oriented stand-up comedy? Well, it's, I mean, it does happen to be mostly black people thank you um but in general it's comics that she thinks should have had a chance um who have been ready for a shot for a while and didn't get one so she gave

us one yeah because i was thinking to myself i mean they like tony woods is in they ready and tony woods has been ready for at least 20 years, if not more. Of course. Tony Woods was born ready. Tony Woods is one of the greatest. Been ready might have been a more appropriate, I mean, you know, just thinking out loud here.

Been ready. Would that have been a more accurate way to... Aaron, maybe you can get Tiffany on the phone and tell her that Dan has some notes for her. Yeah, I was thinking that. I was thinking I should text her and give her the link. Because they ready to me sounds to me, when I hear they ready,

it sounds to me like, finally they're ready. Well, this season she actually, at the beginning of all the specials, you know, she said it was more of that, more of a they've been ready. And I think, you know, her goal during the pandemic was, you know, to pick comics who she knew could put together a set during a pandemic because they have, you know, experience and have been doing it a long time and have, you know, a trough material. So I think, you know, she kind of explained it as they've been ready for this season as opposed to the last season a little bit more. Because she has veterans people

who've been doing comedy 20 30 40 years in this series um so it was me tony godfrey oh wow um dean edwards uh kimberly clark and um barbara carlisle who was like i don't know those last two names but the first ones oh God, that's a powerful show. Yeah, yeah. Kimberly Clark, isn't that a company? It is also a company, yeah. Like a pharmaceutical company or something, I think. I'm just looking at it.

Kimberly Clark Corporation is an American multinational personal care corporation that produces mostly paper-based consumer products. Oh, I was mad. I was wrong all about that. I thought it was like something like beauty stuff. Are these last two comics LA comics? Barbara Carlisle's not.

She's been doing comedy 40 plus years. Back to the first round of Def Jam. She's based in Atlanta. I'm sorry? No, you answered my question. I said, how come we don't know we're at the cellar? Oh, yeah. Because she lives in Atlanta.

And then Kimberly is in LA. Yeah. Because I freak out a little bit when I find out there's some really good comics. How come we don't know we're at the cellar? Oh, yeah, because she lives in Atlanta, and then Kimberly is in L.A. Yeah, because, you know, I get, I freak out a little bit when I find out there's some really good comics around that I've never heard of them, and they're not working at the cellar. I say, what the hell is going on? But right now, it's a long trip for a weekday set. Yeah, yeah.

But I was saying nobody's working at the cellar right now, but that will all change on April 2nd. We ready, we ready we ready y'all ready too we ready april 2nd is the day right now when the comedy second is the day brand reopening and so you'll be doing shows at the the comedy cellar classic i call it the original room on west on mcdougall and the room on West third, the village underground and the fat black pussy cat lounge. You're doing in the lounge or. I think we're doing it in the main room and use the lounge like a green room.

I'm trying to do shows everywhere. I'm trying to do shows in the olive tree too. Which is the restaurant above the comedy cellar. So you're basically trying to compensate for the fact that you can only fill it up one third by adding more rooms, it seems. Yeah. I mean, you know, you know, obviously that doesn't, it doesn't work totally because we just have to pay the expenses or more, but I don't know. We'll just see how it goes. You know, we haven't figured it out. I don't know how much money we can charge.

I don't know. I'd like to, I'm fantasizing that we could that we could test all the customers before they come in. And I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. I think maybe we could charge extra cover charge to try to make up for the fact that we're have lower capacity so we can pay the comedians closer to what they're used to. It's a lot of questions. What about masks? Will everybody have to wear a mask at the table whilst eating and drinking?

I don't think so. Cause you can't wear a mask while you're eating and drinking. Okay. Well, I won't be there the first week, because I am going to Aruba. Have you been vaccinated, Dan? No, because Perry was supposed to get me an appointment, never did. He said he was going to get me an appointment, never got me one. Yeah, yeah, that's how she is. Oh, my God.

The fucking nerve Is just absolutely Unbelievable You did make that offer and you didn't do it And I am so happy To get you an appointment You have to send me your information We get a lot of emails That this imitation of this character you do

Of a Long Island Jewish princess Is kind of anti-semitic They say you should just use your regular voice now, if you don't mind. Unlike some of us, I actually grew up in Queens. Sorry, that's totally different.

Yeah, it is, actually. My misgivings about the vaccine are because I don't technically qualify. I'm not sure about that. I got my technically qualify. I'm not sure about that. I got my first shot. Under what, without being... I'm puffy.

I'm puffy. You've seen me, Dan. Come on. Don't make me say it. I don't... You carry it in a way that's not evident to me. But I would be concerned that if I go down there, somebody might see me because I almost never get recognized. But once in a while that's not evident to me, but I would be concerned that if I go down there, somebody might see me because I almost never get recognized,

but once in a while I do, and they might say, hey, this dude ain't no restaurant worker. But they don't know what your underlying health concerns might be. That's right. You can't judge. That is true. You can have Asperger's. I don't think Asperger's qualifies.

But Dan, here's the thing. It says restaurant workers, I don't think Asperger's qualifies. But Dan, here's the thing. It says restaurant workers, and de Blasio described it as the risk of people having to be in enclosed spaces with little ventilation. You can look all you want to try to find a definition of restaurant workers. You would think it'd be like people who just serve food or something like that, but that definition is not there.

And by analogy, when they did healthcare workers, as we know, they were inoculating every clerical person at the hospital, people who never got near patients, people who were working in office buildings. They all came under the umbrella of healthcare workers. And if you're going to be performing in an eating and drinking place and taking the same risks as waiters and waitresses and staff, particularly at a time when doses don't seem to be short anymore. I think you take your 1099, you go down there and say, I work in the comedy cellar.

And if they say no, they say no. But it's certainly not a fraud to go down there and say, listen, I'm taking the same risk as everyone else down there. Why shouldn't I get the shot? Right. I mean, arguably, we're not taking taking the same risk as everyone else down there. Why shouldn't I get the shot? Right. I mean, arguably, we're not taking the exact same risk because we don't go right up to the table

and talk to people. Neither do the people in the kitchen. I mean... That is a very, very... That's not even a good point. That's a great point. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's...

People in the kitchen, in fact, are less exposed to the customers than I would be. Yeah, yeah. Especially when they're home after the show. What seems to me is going on there. They're very, very, um, uh, blurry about who qualifies and who doesn't, they don't ask for any documentation. They don't tell you,

they tell you you can bring a W2, a letter, a letter. I mean, they're really, it seems to me that they're just trying to keep the door pretty wide open to try to shovel these vaccines out the door. I don't think what they're trying to do is be really tight because they could have said very clearly, restaurant workers are limited to waiters and waitresses. They could have said, we need a W-2 from the last six months.

We need a, you know, they could have made it restrictive easily, but they didn't. This is where Noam's legal training really shines. And I have legal training too, but Noam's bested me with his analysis uh aaron did you get i'm in jersey so maybe it's a little different yeah jersey they have puffy puffy puffy is the thing in jersey that is not in new york yeah i mean that's not the technical term for what it is but i i hit the bmi requirements did you get any side effects from the first shot? I hear the second shot's really where you get more of the side effects. Yeah, no, I didn't get

anything from the first shot. I have another friend who went I think the same day as me, and she got a fever and all that stuff after the first shot. Mild, but the second shot is when I'm expecting just to clear the next day or so anyway, because I have so much

stuff to do every day. Well, I hear that. I hear that if you feel ill, you should rejoice because that means your immune system is going to do it. You know, it's getting it. My father-in-law was misdiagnosed with COVID last week. I got a call. Oh, he's got, he's 90 years old, you understand.

So COVID diagnosis is you know pretty grave but it turns out that uh he he was not COVID positive it was herpes yes but uh no so uh even though he's been vaccinated so we we didn't know what the hell was going on but um I I had a significant reaction to the second shot but nothing you know nothing horrible but I would say it was right on the borderline of would have been enough to keep me in bed and called in sick or gone to work and try to just muscle through it you know tough it out but uh it was it was it was significant which one did you get known i got the uh moderna only the best for me, Aaron. The best one?

No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I mean, Pfizer has this aura to me because Pfizer has me super cold, right? So it's like you think like it's fancier and then you can get it again in three weeks. But I think Pfizer and Moderna are almost essentially the same thing. And then the Johnson & Johnson is a little bit bit different but they all seem to be pretty good yeah but i did want to uh before jamie gets here uh mention the new book that's out on the comedy seller that is available on amazon by our friend andrew hankinson who kind of um what's the word when a reporter uh goes like you know really embedded embedded he embedded himself at the comedy

cellar uh for a guest of a couple of years right it uh at least yeah i mean he no he wasn't there for a year but he came on and off i think over he was there a fair amount and he wrote this book i don't i don't understand the title necessarily but it's called don't applaud either laugh or don't at the comedy cellar that's a quote from depaulo or something or somebody i don't know i can't remember who you think i remember i don't know um actually yeah it says may 2021 but i think it's available now on amazon anyway he sent me an advanced copy as you can clearly see if you're watching this on youtube and i've read about half of it yeah and i find it very interesting uh it's written in, I mean, we should have him on to discuss this.

Yeah. It's written like that, like that movie memento. It's written like backwards order, right? Well, it's written kind of all over the place. It's not written.

I thought it was going to be, you know, in, in, in 1981, Manny Dorman was, you know, like really chronological,

but it's not like that at all. It's, it's, it's written kind of out of all in kind of a, almost random order. And it's, it's just all. It's written kind of out of all, in kind of an almost random order. And it's just all interviews with comedians and tweets and emails that he had collected from comedians, interviews, emails, tweets from comics,

the waitstaff, management, audience members, and he kind of, all the kind of greatest hits that we've been talking about on this show, the Louis incident, the kind of all the, all the kind of greatest hits that we've been talking about on this show. The Louis incident, the Sam moral alligator joke, the, you know, all the different things that have happened, the billion dollar evening when Amy Schumer and Chris rock and everybody was there, all these, these big comedy seller events that happened, the, the, the the uh refurbishment of the kitchen

stuff again big events well the exciting stuff only the exciting stuff that was actually for me less exciting to read but but um compile them in an i think an engaging way um now to somebody that that's not intimately familiar with The Cellar, will it be interesting? I don't know. I guess you'd have to, they will give it to Bernie Fabricant, our designated reader to look at. I read it. I mean, it's hard for me to judge it because I'm so close to it and because I'm quoted at length. And of course, it's very difficult to read yourself quoted and not think you sound like a jackass. But I'm just flattered that there's a book and it's about the cellar

and it has a lot about me and my father. And yeah, I mean, you know, it's the little things in life that make it interesting. You know, it's something. Just the fact that somebody would devote that much time of their life to that, you know, it's very flattering. It's nice for my kids.

They said, daddy, somebody wrote a book about daddy. Somebody wrote a book about daddy. You know, they're excited. But the only thing I would mention, and I don't know if you picked up on this now, did you read the whole thing? Yeah, I think I did, yeah. But the only thing is,

it assumes a lot of knowledge about comedy lingo that I don't know that the average person, I'm so close to it as you are, that I'm assuming that a lot of people don't know this lingo. Like for example, there was the incident where Jerry Seinfeld got the light.

In other words, I blew the light. Yeah, well, he saw the light, he got the light and he got pissed because getting the light means they turn a light on in the back of the room that signals you that you're about done with your set. Yeah, he didn't actually get the light.

He thought he got the light. But the point is, is in the book, it says Jerry Seinfeld got the light and there was no further explanation as to what getting the light means. Yeah. Do you think the average reader would understand that? I think from the context, once they read it,

they'll put two and two together. Yeah, I think they will. But the important thing is he did not get the light. He just thought he got the light. He saw something from the corner of the, through the spotlight, but he didn't get the light. Oh, here's another, here's another comedy lingo that I just wonder whether people will get. It's an author. When you, the author's talking to John Laster. John Laster, who had some alcohol problems and he was, I think, homeless for a brief period of time. I didn't know that.

Go ahead. Well, it's in the book. He was sleeping on the subway, I believe. But it says here, when you were sleeping on a train a few years before you were passed at the cellar, what train was it? That's what the author... Okay, passed at the cellar.

With the average person, passed at the cellar means you're authorized to work at the cellar. I don't know, Aaron, what do you think? You think the average person will figure that out? I think they, I mean, I don't know all the context, but I'm sure they could figure it out, but no, that wouldn't be a familiar term to anybody. I'm sure, you know,

to say I got passed at a club, they wouldn't know what that meant. But I think in the context, I'm sure it's like before you started working there, I'm sure it's probably clear. I didn't know that Lester was homeless. If he was, if he has that background and he's open to talking about it in books, we should have him on to talk about that because that's an inspiring story. First of all, I find him to be a pretty inspiring guy anyway, but this is a whole other level. When you were sleeping on a train a few years before you were passed, what train was

it? Oh man, I used to sleep on the two train. I'm quoting from the book. Did you have a sleeping bag or anything? No. So I'm assuming he was not doing this for fun. Maybe he was just wasted. Whatever it is, it's an interesting story. We should get him on to talk about him if he wants talk about it um i mean it seems to me like you probably didn't have a place to go but we don't know but either way you're right it's interesting so what else is going on in the let's get hankinson on to uh maybe he can uh clarify some of these points. You know, that guy is the reason why Noam and I really became intertwined for lack of a better term. No, there are plenty of better terms. Yeah, I was going to say that.

No lack of a better term. That's a loaded one. No, it's not loaded. What do you mean? What entangled? Intertwined like me and that poison ivy I had last summer right exactly how did that you're talking about andrew hankinson was yes lucasel on time time because i used to

write a column for tablet magazine which is the same magazine that jamie kerchick happens to write a column for and i interviewed Noam for that column. And usually it's like, you know, an hour, and then you're done and you never see the person again. Well, we got him intertwined. Well, Noam, of course. What does that have to do with, you're talking about Kerchick or Hankinson?

Hankinson. Dan, don't rush a woman when she's going around about story. Go ahead, Go ahead. She'll get there. Just wait. At the same time that I was writing was coming out, Andrew Hankinson had written a big piece about Noam and the Cellar in The New Yorker. Okay. And Noam was irate.

Wait for it. Go ahead. Because they had misquoted him. And he, I mean, he was really furious. They lied, but go ahead, go ahead. And I get, and he said, I don't even want to talk to journalists anymore. And I was like, well, to start with, I'm not a journalist, but whatever. Um, I, like you have my word that I'm going to set the record straight. And I have, this was before I knew him so well, so much respect for you and so much respect for the seller. And so I wrote this piece basically saying that what the New Yorker said, I mean, that they had lied.

And the editor in chief was like, I mean, that they had lied. Yeah. And the editor-in-chief was like, excuse me, like, you can't just go around calling, like, journalists liars. You have to get in touch with the person who wrote the piece and give them an opportunity to, you know, refute him. And the person who wrote the piece, as it turns out, was Andrew Hankinson. Yeah, but he didn't lie. What happened is that he submitted it and the editors made him change stuff, which was, and came out factually incorrect.

But anyway. Right. What was the factual error? Well, there were several things that were misquoted. The end of the story, if it's interesting, was that, you can look it up, it's online. They presented this, when they first did the renovation, they ended up moving the comics table over and it was a whole debacle and um when i had hired the contractors i had told them

that the only thing they couldn't do was move the comedians table it was literally the only requirement i had you know i don't know much about the ins and out of kitchens. I left that to Liz. I said, but the comedian's table has to stay where it is. So we get there when it's renovated and it was, and it was moved. So, and it, and it was a little bit too close to the bar and the comedians didn't like it. And we tried for a week or two to see if there was some work around because, and then we ended up moving it back. So, and so, but if you read the story, they make it as

like like that i blew it and i made this big mistake and then and um that the and it's true we measured it was only like i can't remember like eight inches difference you only had to move the table over eight inches over but that eight inches kind of uh broke the uh concept of um personal space between the comedians and customers at the bar. So anyway, but then they said, well, Dwarven claims it was only eight inches, but I mean, it seems so petty when you get into the details,

but the gist of it is, rather than presenting it as something who I'm sure people understand is that you hired- How's that the first time you falsely claimed something was eight inches? I understand is that you hired. You falsely claimed something was eight inches. I was not false then. So rather than present it as something that happens all the time, which is you hired a contractor and they fucked up and then they had to come

back and fix it, which is basically every contracting job I've ever been involved with. They presented as if we did this terrible mistake and Bill Burr was upset about it and Chris... Yeah, I mean, they really were like name-dropping comics. It was just dumb. Your version of that wasn't long-winded at all, by the way. Well, you got me into it. But the thing is that I had the original draft

that the New Yorker had changed. The original draft was perfect, but it wasn't spicy enough for them, I guess, in some way. I don't remember all the details. My memory was shot, and I was curious. I have all the emails. So I somehow wound up calling this guy a liar,

essentially. So I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear back from me. No, he doesn't care. That's all forgotten. He listens to this podcast every week, so you can... Well, did you talk about Hankinson? Well, there's Jamie Kerjic. By the way, first, before we introduce Jamie,

I would like to wish from the world's least Irish podcast a happy St. Paddy's Day to everybody. We are recording on St. Paddy's Day. You will be listening to this after St. Paddy's Day, but I hope it was a good St. Paddy's Day to everybody. We are recording on St. Paddy's Day. You will be listening to this after St. Paddy's Day, but I hope it was a good one that was, you know, not excessive, but joyful. In any case, we have with us,

Jamie Kirchick is with us. And you know what? By accident, I deleted his bio, but he's been on this show before. He's an American conservative reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist,

a graduate of Yale University, where he worked for a student newspaper, the Yale Daily News. Is that my Wikipedia entry you're reading? It may or may not be a Wikipedia entry. The point is, he is an intellectual

and a suitable sparring partner for Noam. No, we agree on everything. He doesn't spar. We don't spar. We don't spar about. And he is with us again for, I think, a second time, if memory serves. James, known to his friends and family as Jamie Ker kerchick welcome to

the comedy seller podcast live from the table and just to make sure you know everybody you've met me perry ellen noam before this is aaron jackson she is comedy seller if you've been to the comedy cell you might have seen her she's also on netflix on this current season of They Ready, which is a Tiffany Haddish production. So, you know everybody, let us know them. I assume you have certain reasons you invited Jamie on. Well, I mean, we were talking about inviting him back on now for a couple months, we just didn't get to it. So, but there's always something going on.

Jamie, what's your, I mean, what's your hot issue this week? We have to talk about the Atlanta shooting. Oh, let's talk about the Atlanta shooting. What's your take I mean, what's your hot issue this week? We have to talk about the Atlanta shooting. Oh, let's talk about the Atlanta shooting. What's your take on the Atlanta? You're a sex addict. You should know something about this. I haven't been following it that closely,

but has it been established that these were, that these murders were race-related? Was it sex-related? Is it clear what the motive was? Just for everybody, I assume everybody knows the story, but this guy, a white guy, 21 years old, went to three, I believe, Asian massage parlors. They offer sexual services. And he shot several people. He killed eight people.

Six of those eight people were Asian women. Two of them were white people, but six of them were Asian. So the conclusion that was drawn was racist murders he claims no they weren't the the the shooter claims that in fact they weren't racist that he uh he was a sex addict and he was trying to lash out at this these temptations that were impacting his life these these sex shops, whatever. I'll read just at the very beginning of Wall Street Journal, Robert Aaron Long, the suspect in the killing of eight people

at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area, told investigators that he targeted the businesses because he blamed them for, quote, for providing an outlet for his addiction to sex. Right. Enforcement officials said Mr. Long, that's maybe an alias, Mr. Long, who was in custody,

took responsibility for the shooting, said he acted alone. Quote, it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate, Captain J.K. said. He said it was not racially motivated. So that's his story. That's my reaction to this. I mean, on the one hand,

you know, the guys have confessed murderer and you should probably not take them at their word. So just because he says it wasn't racially motivated doesn't mean that it was. and maybe skeptical of narratives as they develop, particularly in this era with social media, when a story can build very quickly in the media and accusations can be raised and people can be accused of things. And then a week later you find, oh my God, that's not actually what happened. And I think that's happened.

This has happened many times. Many times. Particularly during the Trump era. And so that's my attitude towards this. I don't know if it's racially motivated. I think we need to wait and there should be an investigation and we should let the facts come out. And I know this is not a popular thing to say because right now in Washington, D.C., there is a vigil protesting, you know, anti-Asian hate crime because of this

incident, which is not to say there shouldn't be vigils, obviously, protesting anti-Asian hate crime, but this might not have been that. What facts are there, like, are we waiting for the guy who killed them to, are we counting on him to say that? He's the only one who's killed. Well, Perrielle, by the way, first of all, see, Perrielle's of the school of thought that says that if anybody is killed of a particular race other than white, it had to be a hate crime.

And if anybody's white is killed, and that's just not- I don't know that that's my school of thought. I mean, well- The facts we have are, a thought. I mean, well, the facts we have are, men, I mean, they will... It sounds to me, and again, this is just my postulating. I'm not coming down on either side.

It sounds to me like the guy's crazy. He's a sex... He's obviously a terrible human being. He shot eight people, six of whom happened to be Asian. It was not... He didn't do this because he hates Asian people. That's what, that's what it sounds like to me. So I would, you know, if I were a news editor at a newspaper, or if I'm a, you know, a columnist or someone with a Twitter account, which I am, I would be hesitant to come out and declare, as a journalist, I'd be hesitant to declare this is anti-Asian hate. Obviously, no one's listening to me, because this is the capital

N narrative that is being promulgated across Twitter. I'm sure it's over all the left-wing websites. Let Aaron answer, then I want to say something. Go ahead, Aaron. Yeah, no, I was going to say, I mean, obviously we don't have all the information, and likely we never will, because like you said, the information is only going to come from him in order to determine that. However, I need to be equally skeptical

in the other direction. I'm not a journalist, right? So I have seen so many times when things that were hate crimes yes the the the um the what is inclination to just go oh this person is crazy oh they're mentally disturbed right that to me is always like oh so everybody always gets out when they're white they do something they're crazy as opposed to i want i want to say something so first of all just so you know about so right after the the wall street journal and all the major papers uh said this

that that law enforcement atlanta it's not just he says it law enforcement in atlanta seems to think this is a credible story uh chuck schumer tweets out we can't lose our vigilance against the forces of hate biggest free discrimination we must stop Asian hate. And that really pissed me off because that's just to me, like he just trying to utilize this. I believe that there will be an investigation and if they find that he's constantly frequenting massage parlors and they don't find any anti-Asian hate on his social media and whatever it is, and he presents a plausible picture of a sex addict, then this will become a plausible story. And if not, not.

Now, I want to bring something up here because, and this is kind of why I want to quit this show altogether, but I'm going to do it just anyway. I started doing some research on hate crimes and all this stuff, and white on Asian hate crimes, black on Asian hate crimes, all this stuff, and white on Asian hate crimes, black on Asian hate crimes, all this stuff. So look, this is, let me start here before I bring it up. This is from the NYPD website. I don't know if you can see it. This is the NYPD hate crimes dashboard. Data is through the first of the year or the end of the year. Can you see it? So this is

Asian. You click on Asian here. There have been 27 hate crimes against Asians in 2020. These are, Asians are about 1.5 million, I think, in the city. It's hard to find those numbers, but Asians are a very big ethnic group. There's big numbers. So that's how many, 27 incidents of hate crimes against Asians. I don't know how many of these are assaults or whatever. Sometimes they're as minor as spitting and as major as serious assaults. So let's down the black, black hate against blacks, 39 anti-black hate crimes in the city in 2020. And of course, if anytime somebody black is attacked, similarly, we will assume for the most part that it's a hate crime.

Does anybody want to venture a guess on the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2020? These numbers, they don't mean anything on their own though. Well, sure they do. They're hate crimes. Wait, give me... I'll give you the number. I'll give you the number. I'll give you the number now.

This is from the NYP... Perriel, you want to guess the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes? I say this because there's vigils about Asian hate crimes, and we have vigils, as we should, about hate crimes against black people, I'm sure. But what do you think the number is against anti-Jewish hate crimes? By the way, this is not Trump country. This is not white supremacy, Bill. Well, actually, if I'm not mistaken,

Bill de Blasio did blame the fate of anti-Jewish hate crimes on Donald Trump. And Asian hate crimes are spiking in New York and San Francisco mainly, but both, you know, not white supremacy bills. But okay, anybody, no one wants to take a guess on the Jewish crimes? I'm going to tell you.

500. And the Jews are fewer than the Asians. Jews are 115. Around four times the number. And as a, not as a Jewish person, but as a person who values truth, it is, comes to, I do come to wonder, well, what the fuck

is going on here? Okay, but Noam, here's the thing. So, yes, what other important numbers to know are, of course, four times the number.

Listen, of course, population. There's our vigil. Yeah, go ahead. Of course, population of people in the city who are in these groups, but also,

let's talk, I mean, this also is not happening in a vacuum, right? It's happening in the COVID era. You need to be looking at what happened in 2019 and what happened in 2020 and what happened in 2018. I am looking, this is 2020. But what I'm saying is to compare the numbers.

If there's a spike, right, that's comparative to before. I don't know how many Jewish hate crimes, we don't have all the numbers that are pertinent to make the argument that you're having. I think it started in 2018 or 2019. It was-covid there was a huge uh these these these numbers are pretty consistent for the past several years but what i'm saying is the asian hate crimes oh they can yeah they could have no it could have doubled from 13 to 27 you know approximately double 100 increase yeah but 100 100 increase it's now but now but then it gets more uncomfortable

and i won't even go into it because i i don't want to get% increase. But then it gets more uncomfortable, and I won't even go into it because I don't want to get a run out of town. It gets more uncomfortable when you start to look at the makeup of who are the accused of the crimes. It's not the Hasidic Jews, I'll tell you that. So whatever it is, my bigger point is that

everybody's just going to try to use whatever it is opportunistically. I think we're at a point now, basically, we've really come to it gradually, but I really think we're at the point now where you really, truth is not even a defense anymore if you want to talk about stuff out loud. The stuff that I could, if I were just to rattle off inconvenient facts now, just rattle them off an Excel spreadsheet from an FBI database or something, I could be finished. Mike Peska got fired for his opinion about things. People are getting fired for the guy from Mumford and Sons had to go into hiding because

he praised Andy Ngo's book. We are at a time when this is just the darkest time. I've never felt less free. I've never felt less like an American. It's everything that I used, everything that I used to relish about my particular lifestyle with the comedians and everything,

be able to go there and hang out with like, you know, Sherrod or Godfrey or people, those are black comedians, but people, you know, or Dean Obadala, who was Arabic or whatever, and just have it out, just bam, bam, bam about all these issues, you know, and then have some drinks. And those days are over. Somebody's going to have a recorder. Somebody's going to find something I said. Someone's going to take it out of context. It's going to come back three years later. I'm going to quote something that somebody said and I'm not allowed to quote.

This is just the worst time ever. And this is not Aaron or Jamie's thing, but I think we really have to consider whether we should continue with this show at all. What is the risk reward analysis at this point? Like I'm hemming and hawing now just by showing the numbers. Like, what is he doing?

What's he pointing out there? You know, go to the NYPD hate crime dashboard and then you tell me why the number that's- I am gonna buck you up. I'm gonna buck you up. And I'm gonna tell you, you can't have this defeatist attitude because if you have this defeatist attitude

and you're a pretty prominent guy, you own a very well-known comedy club. If you have this kind of defeatist attitude, then're a pretty prominent guy. You own a very well-known comedy club. If you have this kind of defeatist attitude, then it's going to trickle down and it's just a bad example for all. It ripples across the culture. And so you really have to, you know, have some cojones, as we say in the Jewish faith. And you just got to do it, man.

And you've been doing this podcast for a couple of years. I'm sure you've said stuff that is cancelable, and they haven't done it yet. And, you know... Well, I almost got canceled with the whole Louis thing. And actually, you know, in a certain way, I was the first one and one of the only ones who really didn't buckle and stood up to all this.

I know. And I got boycotted. But it's worse now. I have to say it's even worse now it is it is getting I will say this I don't disagree with you yeah about you know the times changing and not feeling as comfortable either being on stage and it being in between the people in the room or anything like that I totally get that and I agree with that my my but my one of my biggest um one of my biggest pet peeves right now, or one of my biggest concerns is, look, any piece

of data can be manipulated to prove a point. And if you don't have all of the information to compare in all the different ways, then, you know, nothing's, you have to be comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges and looking at the whole picture. And so that's what I was trying to point out. And Aaron, of course, you're right. Of course, you're right. And I try very hard never to manipulate data, but still, even having said that, and I'm not just paying lip service to what you're saying,

because it's absolutely true what you're saying. And it's very, very important to know. Nevertheless, when you see from the NYPD, the number of 200, well i i screwed up the the i screwed up the time frame here hold on but i'll just i'll just go for the whole from the beginning of the end the beginning of 1 2019 to 12 30 2020 this is two years now the jewish number is now 684 and the anti-black number is is this right right? Oh, it changed again. Yeah. The Jewish number is 600. Why is it? It's 684. And the black number is 74. I mean, it doesn't even look right.

It's going back from 356 to 684 for some reason, some buggy. Let's say it's 356 and 74. The point is that nobody is under that impression. There is something just fundamentally distorted with our news such that I think most people would guess that there must be five times or 10 times as many anti-Black hate crimes as anti-Jewish crimes. I would have thought so. But it's not the black hate crimes. I think what you're hearing is people saying police violence versus hate crimes, right? Like those aren't necessarily the same. That's not the same thing. So when we hear black crime in New York City,

a lot of times it's state violence. It's not. The police stats are not much different along these lines. The police stats are much less than you'd think too. But I'm just talking about hate crimes on the street. Right. But I'm just saying in hate crimes on the street, you know? Right. But I'm just saying in terms of what you say,

you would think it would be more, I'm saying the attention that's being paid to violence against black bodies is typically on the state side. That is where the attention is coming from. And that's what you hear about. And God forbid, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't pay attention to the violence against black people by the police or, or,

or otherwise, but there is a stunning lack of attention against the violence against Jews. It doesn't seem to be on anybody's radar in particular. And to be honest, as a Jew, I'm not that worried about it either. It's still a relatively low number, probably. Also, no, it's not just Jews. It's not Jews like you and me who are at risk. It is the black-hatted Hasidic Jews. Yeah. So that adds a whole nother layer of, you know, why the media doesn't want to talk about it.

Because you're talking about a population that, let's face it, people at the New York Times and people in media don't know about them, don't care about them, right? Because there are these crazy right-wing, you know, the women just have babies all the time and they probably vote Republican and they're, you know, right-wing Zionists. So it's like the most unpopular part of the Jewish community that is most at risk for these hate crimes.

So that's a whole nother layer to it. It's not Jews like you and me who are at risk. No, you're absolutely right. And look, I have my negative feelings about them. I can't lie. Sure. I thought that that wasn't true though, Jamie. I thought that there were plenty of anti-Jewish hate crimes

at like Jewish centers. Yes, I'm not saying that there haven't been, but I'm saying disproportionately, when no one's talking about hundreds of hate crimes against Jews in New York City, a vast number of those, disproportionate to their size of the total Jewish population, is Hasidic Jews. It's not, you know, Upper West Side Jews being attacked. It's mostly in Brooklyn. It's in, you know, Flatbush.

It's in those neighborhoods. It's not the Jews who It's in Flatbush. It's in those neighborhoods. It's not the Jews who deserve it. I'm kidding. And by the way, and you look at these other numbers, the transgender number is four. And now you're really going to get canceled.

Don't even get into the, don't even start on the transgender stuff. We're going to get us all canceled. Now all we're doing here, and I'm just like, I'm going to tell you what the number. So there's four. Now, again, it's nuts if you think that I don't care about transgender violence

because this is a horrible, horrible, gay bashing, transgender violence. This is all, I mean, I mean, I, growing up, this was the violence that identified by my father as the, as the, the, the most evil violence that was still somehow acceptable in society. You know, like he, we knew gay guys, you know, having a restaurant in the village and always being a gay friendly place.

We'd hear, you know, people who work for, we'd get, we'd get the shit kicked out of them, you know? So, and I don't know. The cops wouldn't do anything. No, no. And, and, and there was a certain sympathy for it. I mean, even I remember someone who worked for me one time, bragged that he saw a guy in the bathroom that thought was gay and he kicked the shit out of him. I mean, this was just horrible. You know, people who are young may not really realize what open season it was. I'm just having said that, it's four attacks on transgender again.

And I would have thought this is, you know, big numbers, you know, compared to the Jews. So we get such a distorted thing. And yeah, you're right. You can't, you can't talk about it. And again, God forbid, this is all important. It's all important. So, okay. That, that's that. What else, what else, how do you think Biden's doing, Jamie? How's he doing as president? You know, I don't hear much about him. He doesn't, he hasn't given a press conference since he started. Yeah. That's the longest ever, right, for a president? That's what I read. The longest, you said?

The longest without a press conference in the first press conference. In the first couple months, it might be. It might be. You know, Obama rarely ever gave press conferences either. Trump gave far too many of them, I think, was his problem. I love it. You know, it's too soon to say. I mean, he's doing, I think he's getting a lot of what he wanted accomplished. He doesn't seem all together with it. You know,

he wasn't able to summon the name of his defense secretary a couple of days ago. I mean, certainly getting this $1.9 trillion package passed is a huge victory for him. But I just think, you know, no matter what he does, people are comparing him to his predecessor. Right. And I think there's just this sense of relief, you know, that there isn't this kind of madman at the helm who, you know, every hour is a crisis.

Isn't not hearing about him a good thing? Not hearing about him, exactly. I think most Americans, frankly, are just sort of, like, you know, you asked me, how's Biden doing? I had to pause and think. I haven't been paying attention. Or I haven't really heard about it. And I think that's sort of a good thing.

You know, I think part of living in a democracy is not having to think about politics all the time. If you're a normal civilian, you know, if you're someone like me, you know, if you're someone like me, whose job it is, is to follow these things, whatever, but the average person should not feel that they have to be following politics all the time. That's like, if you're living in a, in a dictatorship, right? Cause that's when politics is constantly, it's a life or death matter for you, you know, who, what, what the kind of power shifts are in the hierarchy.

And so, yeah, I think not having to be confronted with political questions on a constant basis is a healthy sign. What is this doing in terms of ratings for CNN? Exactly. Viewership in general for these shows? CNN is totally collapsing. And this gets to your question, Noam, about the media and the incentives for the media, particularly the cable news media, which is they loved Trump. They loved him. And he was great for them, which is why I had many criticisms of Trump. But the criticism that he was bad to the media and that he sort of incited violence against the media. He

made the media's job so difficult. And these heroic, brave, truth-telling journalists were, you know, confronting such a horrible thing in the presence of Donald Trump. I had to chortle at that because who would Jim Acosta be without Donald Trump? You know, he'd be a weatherman somewhere, which is frankly what he should be. Okay. And that really goes for so many people. And a fine one. Right. He'd be a fine weatherman. And it's, you know, I think you actually invited me on because I wrote this piece a couple of weeks ago about the Lincoln Project. Yes. Yes. Which is, you know, for the viewers who don't know what they are,

they were a group of Republican strategists, political strategists, campaign advisors, gurus, whatever you want to call them, who sort of formed this anti-Trump pack. They raised almost $100 million, most of it from liberals, to basically attack Trump all the time in very kind of crude, you know, sometimes clever, funny ways, but it seemed not in a way that was actually attracting Republicans to vote, to not vote for Donald Trump. It seemed like they were more just, you know, getting wisecracks out of liberals, basically. Like, I don't really understand what the purpose of them was, but I grouped the Lincoln Project with CNN and a lot of other writers and, you know, pundits of people who basically, their entire livelihoods depended upon

hating Donald Trump, right? Like professionally hating him. And now that he's gone, their sort of purpose is gone. And, you know, the money is no longer coming in, the ratings are down. And it just, it just made me very cynical, more cynical than I was about politics, and about certain sectors of the media about the punditry business that I'm sort of in. And you just see how much of it is driven not by sort of honest assessments of what's happening, but, you know, what can help my bottom line. And, you know, for CNN is the most absurd example of this, because who has led CNN for the past couple years, a guy named Jeff Zucker. What is Jeff Zucker's history? Jeff Zucker was the executive at NBC, who created The Apprentice.

Okay. So he basically made Donald Trump into a global celebrity. And then, you know, fast forward 10 years, Jeff Zucker's at CNN. Donald Trump decides to run for president. Jeff Zucker gives this guy total like $2 billion worth of free airtime, helps him get elected president. And then the minute Trump's elected president, CNN goes into resistance mode. And Jeff Zucker, the guy who made Donald Trump with The Apprentice, wants all of us to believe that he's leading this, you know, righteous, valiant, pro-democracy, anti-Donald Trump vanguard. It's total horse shit.

Wow. It's total horse shit. That is so fucking sinister. I cannot believe that. Did you not know this? No, I didn't. Okay. Well, there you go. I don't think most people know that.

Did you know that? I knew that, yeah. Okay, you know everything. Did you guys know that? Did you know that Jeff Zucker I'm always aware of that association Yeah, I knew he was at NBC But I never thought to think

It was a master plan If that's what you're suggesting So, you know, like when I was watching CNN During the Trump years I'd be watching it And I'm like, you guys gave You guys just In 2015, you stuck a camera at this guy's rallies

and he would just go on for hours ranting and you just gave him free airtime. Yeah, and I think every, even the most, even like MSNBC did that, but I think- Not as bad as CNN. But I feel like, and I don't watch CNN. I used to work there and I just can't stand it. But I just, and so I watch the

personalities I like in that point. Cause I think it's all just entertainment, but I just, I always say like, I wish the news could just not be 24 hours again. If they could just go back to maybe 12 hours a day being on and then just blackout and then the national anthem, like, I think we would get so much, it would be so much more useful. Yeah. And this goes back to the, oh, sorry. Oh, no, no, no. I was just going to say, I don't think when they were giving him, well, I like to think that when they were giving him that attention

that it was all almost as a this is a sideshow. I don't think anybody, I didn't think of it as a master plan, like, oh, we're going to get this guy elected and then flip on him. I think they were like, this is some crazy shit. We'll just put it on now, get the ratings and then Hillary will be president and that'll be it. You know, but this the point you make about 24 hour news is very it's very important. And I think it ties into the original conversation we were having,

which is you have this 24 hours a day that you need to fill. And so when you have this, you know, shooting in Atlanta, which maybe it's a hate crime, it doesn't sound like it, it's probably something else, but the incentive is to turn everything into, it's, it's a catastrophize, right? Because you need to fill that hole with something. And so, you know, a murder spree in Atlanta that would otherwise just be a local story suddenly is inflated into this national issue.

Because the journalists have an incentive to blow everything out of proportion so that that chyron at the bottom of the screen can constantly be, you know, it's like a crack addiction. Not that I've ever done crack, but I imagine crack. It's trying to suck you in constantly. Well, this goes even for the way they inflated like the recent story about the Trump phone call with the secretary in Georgia or whatever. That was pretty bad, what he did, wasn't it? Jamie. What, the phone call?

Yeah. No, you heard they had to correct it, right? Oh, I didn't know. I didn't follow, know what happened. Oh yeah, the phone call, he didn't say any of the stuff that was out there. I thought they had to correct it, right? Oh, I didn't know. I didn't follow. No, what happened? Oh, yeah, the phone call. He didn't say any of the stuff that was out there. I thought they had the recording. Yeah, the recording contradicts the stories.

Jamie, is there... Look it up. I'll look it up. I didn't hear that. You know, what would otherwise be a local story. Is shooting and killing eight people ever just a local story? I mean, at a minimum, you know, this is a big, this would be a big. Sure.

A celeb for the gun control. Gun control issue. Sure. But the, I think the rush to turn this into, to feed it into a broader anti-Asian hate crime narrative, when it, there's a very good chance it was just a coincidence that most of these women were Asian, that it wasn't the intent, it wasn't part of the motive. That is, I think, that sort of thing happens because of this 24-hour news cycle that we've had really since CNN started in the early 1980s.

Well, I just think that also there's a difference between just the straight news and then what cable news is, is just mainly just opinion and commentary, right? So a straight journalist is gonna go, we don't have all the information yet, sources, whatever, whatever. Now, because of the climate we're in, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that,

you know what I mean? It's an anti-Asian hate crime, right? And then you have people who, you know, they're not even, a lot of these people are not journalists. They are talk show, they're talk radio hosts who got a TV show, right? So I just think that there's just a big, because it's obviously a real thing. I mean, we have a comedy-teller-comedian, Ronnie Chang, being a huge activist in the anti-Asian violence. He's really outspoken and really in all these different campaigns. So, you know what I mean? It's real. And so I just think that there's just cable news.

I get a little information, but really it's just entertainment. It's not the news. The news is the news. Read the news yeah read the news watch the news on bbc or something you know that uh i don't just because we're running out of time that jamie has a a book out oh good talk to her about it well i wrote a book a couple i'm i i have a book coming out in a couple months but it's a little early so a little early but you know you're here and we're here and it sounds like an interesting book called uh so the hidden sorry secret city the

hidden secret city the hidden it's a little alliterative you know this the hidden history of gay washington yeah uh is forthcoming from henry holt publishers i guess yeah um so um coming from Henry Holt Publishers, I guess. Yeah. So, is it, you've done writing it? Oh, it's, yeah, it's, well, it's almost there. It'll be out either the very end of this year or early next year. Yeah, no, it's a very exciting project. It's a sort of sweeping history of homosexuality and national politics from World War II

to the end of the century. Going through every presidency from FDR to Bill Clinton. There's not any information about... It's just all known information? No, most of it is... Well, some of it's known. A lot of it is new. Stuff that I found through our

archival research and interviews and other forms of investigation. And yeah, I think it's going to be a pretty fascinating book. I hope. I know this is not your time frame, but do you believe that Abraham Lincoln was gay?

There's no way of knowing. The evidence is, there's a book written about it. Uh, what we have to go on are his letters with this man who we shared a bed with for several years, which was not an unusual thing in the frontier American West in the middle of the 19th century. You know, you read these letters and they are a little steamy. Um, and it's certainly possible that he, look, it's possible he had gay sex, whether or not he himself identified as gay. I think it's open to interpretation. It's not a crazy thing. It's not a crazy thing to speculate. Do you think he was a vampire hunter? That's really important.

Now the Lincoln, now there's a lot of, that's what it was in that article. The Lincoln Project was really corrupt when it came to the issue of. Right. So what was that? Well, so the reason why the Lincoln Project is in the news is because one of the founders is a guy named John Weaver, who had gotten in trouble for sending lewd Twitter messages to many young men, all of whom, and this is an important point, all of whom were of legal age, except for one who was 14. And as I understand it, reading the New York Times, the messages he sent to the 14-year-old were not inappropriate sexually until the kid turned 18.

He was clearly kind of grooming the kid, but it was all done, you know, through computers. There was no physical abuse. He went, spent four years? He was determined. Wow. He was determined. Patience is really impressive, don't you think? Right.

So he did bad stuff, totally unprofessional, possibly criminal. I'm not sure. I'm not a lawyer. But there was another scandal, which is the fact that the Lincoln Project raised $83 million, most of which did not go towards funding advertisements, but to the personal consulting firms of the guys who started it. So there's this massive financial scam going on. There's this sort of lurid

quasi-sex scandal with a gay aspect to it. And Steve Schmidt, who is the founder of the Lincoln Project, he was the campaign manager for John McCain in 2008. You know, he has all these, you know, he's now in the middle of this scandal. He also knew about John Weaver's predilections, you could say, for months in advance and did nothing to stop it. And he decides to come out with a letter in which he announces himself as being a victim of childhood sexual abuse and says that, you know, because I'm a victim of childhood sexual abuse, I know what these young men who were victimized by John Weaver have gone through. And so what he basically does is he's conflating actual sexual abuse,

sexual molestation of children, of young, underage children, with a closeted gay man sending lurid text messages and Twitter direct messages to 18 and 19 and 20-year-old men. And he's basically conflating homosexuality and pedophilia as a means of exonerating himself from his own very serious financial scam that he's involved in. And so that's what kind of really angered me when he wrote this, you know, this, of course, he called it my truth, which is this, you know, this kind of language people use now, you know, there's my truth, as opposed to the truth. His truth was that he was, you know, sexually molested. And by the way, I question the veracity of that. I know we're not

allowed to ever, you know, question people who say they've been the victims of sex. But I think given the circumstances here, right, where he's trying to basically redirect blame and scrutiny from his own financial. It's like a reverse Kevin Spacey. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's like Kevin Spacey did when he came out. Right. Or Jim McGreevey. Remember him, the governor of New Jersey? Oh, yeah. I'm a gay American. It's like, yeah, that has nothing to do with the fact that you're just another corrupt New Jersey politician. Like, that's why you have to resign, not because you're gay. So what Steve Schmidt was basically trying to do was, yeah, like Steve Schmidt is a total scam artist. And rather than own up to that, he's like, oh, there's this like creepy

faggot who like, look at him and look what he did. He's like the guy who molested me when I was 13 at summer camp. And I'm like, wait, come on. Like, really? You want us to go along with this? So that's what, you know, led me to write the piece. And yeah, I thought that was really homophobic. I don't think there's that much hom that people get fired for, that is where they read, they can read the hate into the dog whistle between the lines, right? And then to hear something like Joy Reid, who tweeted out like really pure gay hate, you know, and then claimed it was a lie, then claimed she was having a, never happened. She's still out there tweeting sanctimoniously about other people. Which by the way, I would say,

I'm someone who believes in forgiveness and I've certainly written things 10 years ago, 15, however many. Every writer has written things that they regret writing. And if they tell you otherwise, they're lying. So if Joy Reid had simply owned up to what she had written and said, I've changed, I'm not that person anymore,

and I'm ashamed of what I wrote, then I would have had, a lot of other people would have not forgiven her. I would have been happy to forgive her because I believe that, you know, if you don't allow people to grow and change, then, you know, what's the point of living in this world, right? What did it for me was she concocted this crazy cockamamie conspiracy theory involving hackers who somehow went back in time and hacked her website. And they were the ones who wrote the homophobic stuff. And she got her lawyers to call for an FBI investigation. And MSNBC totally went along with this. And for me, it's like, okay, now as a journalist, you're lying.

Your cable network is complicit in this lie. And to this day, she still has not really owned up to that. That to me is the problem. So to be clear, I don't particularly like seeing anybody who I find interesting on TV being fired for anything. Like Pat Buchanan was anti-Semite. I used to look forward to his appearances. It's the way they treat the other people that really bothers me. Having said that she was at an age and in a world where it is pretty jarring.

Oh yeah. Those beliefs at that, at that point in her life, you know, she wasn't some kid and similarly like people being full of shit. There's no way that Chris Cuomo is totally shocked now to find out that his brother Andrew has toxic masculinity. I think this is sort of analogous to the Lincoln Project thing. And this is not to minimize what Andrew Cuomo is accused of vis-a-vis the many women who have made accusations against him. But I don't think that's as really bad of a scandal

as the nursing home stuff. Like, thousands of people died. And yet, and yet, you know, partly because a lot of people in the media and the Democratic Party don't want to talk about that, because they would be implicated in this, right? Because other governors, you know, and it's political, they'd rather talk about the sex, because that can just be hung on his neck alone. And there's no connections to any other policies. It's just, you know, Andrew Cuomo, we can get rid of him because he was bad with a bunch of women.

And so that's why I think you're seeing so much more emphasis. You know, it's like with the John Weaver thing. You know, the John Weaver thing, in my mind, is not nearly as bad as the financial grift of the lincoln project can i ask you a question about the gay thing if you don't want to talk about this or things other than just tell me but it it is where my mind went when you were

talking about this stuff with the 14 year old boy and i have heard this talked about people got in trouble for talking about it but is it is there something to the fact that it was so difficult for so long to be gay yes you couldn't come out as a debutante like that a that a a culture arose which we would find morally problematic today which was practically necessary. And it wasn't as we see, especially what I'm saying, we're older teenage boys, 15, 16, 17 year old boys, we're having relationships with older gay men in their 20s and 30s. And this was part of a rite of passage in some way, not molestation, God forbid. But it was just the fact of life, maybe, because there was no other way, really.

You know, is that, is there some truth to that? You've heard that talked about, right? I think that that probably explains some of those relationships. It doesn't defend them. No, no. It doesn't, but I think as a way of understanding, from a sociological perspective, and understanding why these sorts of relationships happened. Yeah, I think that's certainly part of it.

You mean there was no other way? I'm a little confused, there was no other way. I didn't look, any sort of sexuality that is repressed, that is sort of forced into the closet, as we say. And it's dangerous. So that's the, huh? And it's physically dangerous. It's know, as we say. And it's dangerous. Huh? And it's physically dangerous. It's illegal.

It was illegal until 2003. Yeah. Okay? There were still sodomy laws in this country. So any sort of sexuality that is, you know, treated like that by society and by the state, there are going to be manifestations that are unhealthy or that are, you know, not ideal.

And so I think that's why a lot of, you know, gay sexual encounters, you would see, you know, you would see in public restrooms and in sort of cruising and public parks and all that sort of stuff, because that was the only place where gay men could go to find sexual partners. Like there was no, you know, gay bars were being raided, right? There was no dating, dating pages in the, in the, in newspapers. There were no debutante balls. So what do you expect is going to happen? And I imagine maybe not as much comfort looking for the other kid like you at your school,

right? Because then now you both are, right, right, right. Go ahead. Sorry, Jamie. And I think now, you know, it's such a change now and we have a much healthier attitude towards sexuality in this country than we used to. You are seeing and you will continue to see those sorts of expressions of gay sexuality will wane. Yeah. I mean, the sexual urge is overpowering right i mean i'm just gonna talk

about male sexuality because i i experienced that we all all us men know what that's like and if you imagine it 17 years old not even not a matter of trying to meet a girl that's just that's it like that's it no the answer is no you're not you shall not there's nothing for you and and by the way you're sick of course you're gonna wander into some bar you're you're i mean the way, you're sick. Of course, you're going to wander into some bar. I mean, you're going to hook up in some way. It's overpowering, you know? And, you know, people, I think people, I don't know. I don't know why I'm on it. It's just my mind wandered there when you were talking about this stuff. And I always felt that there's a layer of judgment on it that I think people don't really, I mean, I, I presume to try to

imagine what it's like, but I'm sure I only can get close to it. But it's, it had to be awful, is what I'm saying. And when you're living in something awful, what are you going to do? Like, you know, I shall not, that's just, that's not the proper moral thing. I'm just not, I'm just going to go without sex. No, that's not realistic. By the way, I managed to do it till 22. But what did, you know, a gay kid in high school in the 80s, you know, what did he do? There was no way that he couldn't go online and find people, you know, that were like him.

He might not, I mean, he might've thought he was the only one in the world, you know, or why, I mean, what did you know, Jamie? You're a little bit younger, I guess. I'm younger than that. So I was not in high school in the 80s. Were you in high school in the Internet era? Yes.

Yeah, I'm 37. And I don't know if you want to even talk about this. You're about it. But just because you're writing a book about in politics, it's a natural entree. And it's interesting. I can't lie. It's interesting. You know, something I don't know about. But you don't have to talk about it. No, entree. And it's interesting. I can't lie. It's interesting. You know, something I don't know about,

but you don't have to talk about it. No, I'm happy to talk about it. There are a lot of suicides, I guess, is the answer to my question. Well, absolutely. Gay teenagers, I'm not sure what the numbers are now, but certainly, you know, for law, I'm sure it's higher still,

but, you know, at some point, I remember reading statistics that said a third of all teenage suicides were, you know, gay, were gay kids. And, you know, there was that whole It Gets Better project that Dan Savage started getting, you know, gay public figures to talk about their lives. And I think that's had a very beneficial effect. But yeah, and there's just so many, I mean, it's just,

part of what my book does is it sort of documents the damage that was done by these policies that our government had that bank that that prohibited gay people from working in the federal government that prohibited them from you know working for the state department or the cia from having security clearances and you just realize yeah it was terrible what happened to gay people obviously but also the talent that the country was deprived of, right? The smarts, the, and this is true for any minority, right? I mean, certainly for African-Americans, for any people, or for women. I mean, women, obviously, half the population who have been, you know, who have been excluded from certain areas of life simply because of who they are.

The entire society is deprived of their talents and their skills. But Jamie, what changed? You would say that what changed with Black people is we got to know them and realize their skills and talents and learned that they were like us. I think it's the same with gays. I think with African-Americans, it was really in the 60s. It was those images from the South of, you know, John Lewis being attacked by dogs and fire hydrant. I think for a lot of people, you know, this was TV. It had only been around for a couple of years.

I think for a lot of white people, the idea of what racist oppression was, was kind of this sort of, you know, ambiguous, vague thing. To actually see the violence and the absolute shocking terror of it on television. And, you know, these very dignified young men and women being torn apart by dogs and fire hydrants and, you know, beaten up at lunch counters. I think that had a huge effect. And it's similar, I think, with gay people. Well, and the other difference of the African And it's similar, I think, with gay people. Well, and the other difference

of the African-American community was, you know, a lot of white people didn't, because there's so much segregation, there's still a lot of segregation, not legally, but de facto segregation, that a lot of white people still don't know Black people. I think the difference is with gay people is that there are gay people everywhere. There are gay people in the most conservative Catholic right-wing family.

There's gay people in the most rural, you know, they are, we are evenly distributed everywhere. And so when gay people started coming out of the closets and, you know, AIDS played a huge part of this because it forced people out of the closet, right? So there were people who were hiding their sexuality. And then all of a sudden, you know, the guy who sat across from you at work, who you never suspected of being gay, because he was so masculine and tough. And he talked about all the women that he was banging every weekend. He's not coming to work anymore because he's sick with liver cancer. He was a very healthy 33 year old guy. And then all of a sudden, he's in the hospital. So that starts happening in the 80s, and then gay people start coming out. The 90s is sort of the gay decade, right?

It's sort of, you know, Bill Clinton comes into office. He's the first presidential candidate to appeal openly to the gay community. You have the first openly gay people being appointed to jobs in the federal government. You have Ellen is a huge thing. You have pop culture is now sort of, you know, Katie Lang and, and it's, you know, it's becoming kind of a cool thing. It's not like a dangerous thing anymore. And I think that's really what eventually led to the.

Elton John was big, by the way, you may not know. Elton John is a huge force, is a huge force. Also in the nineties, I think is when he. Earlier, earlier. Eighties, nineties. Yeah. He was still claiming to be straight in the 90s i think is when he earlier 80s 90s yeah he was still claiming to be straight in the 70s and by he said he was by it's always the buy thing you know i was by for a couple weeks right and then you know that's sort of the but there are people that are buying there are men of course there are yes so so i i have an exit question kind of but since you

talked about the african-american experience i i think it's important to make sure that aaron that didn't anything you want to add to that. And then to, to what Jamie said about that in case Aaron. I totally agree with him. I've been watching this great series on Netflix called amend. It's hosted by Will Smith and it's all about the 14th amendment. And it actually talks about how Dr. King orchestrated,

like how he was so great at marketing and media and how he knew that if he got little children out there, you know, the idea of nonviolence is to provoke somebody to act towards you and then not react and how he used all that to change perception in the country with just the visuals and how he absolutely meant to do it all. But yeah, I agree with you. So Jamie, I know you may not have meant it to be, but I don't think I was speaking for myself here. There was something quite moving about everything you just said. Did you feel that? I don't, I... Was there? I'm glad, I'm pleased to hear that.

Yeah, so you should go back. I haven't talked about that this much just because I've been working on this book for so long and I haven't really spoken about these issues in these sorts of forums yet. I plan to obviously when the book comes out. So I'm, I'm happy to hear that. Yeah. I was, I found myself moved by that. And that brings me to the last thing. One of the things, so I'll tell you how I launched into it. I did some research about the mRNA discovery and innovation in the vaccine. And I talked about this one time on the show, and it turns out this is an unbelievable American success story. Now, when I was a kid in 1969, and we landed on the moon, every American was strutting about being

American. We landed on the moon, and we're all taking pride in our accomplishment. I would dare say, although I don't know, maybe even African Americans who were treated very badly at that time still felt some pride in America for landing on the moon. Maybe I'm wrong. So this mRNA thing, it starts out with, I think, some Hungarian immigrants. And it's a whole American success story that involves immigration and innovation and people of color. And it's a, it's a whole American success story that involves immigration and innovation and people of color. And now we have this vaccine in nine months that everybody said would take, you know, maybe five, 10 years. It's an unbelievable American accomplishment.

Yet it seems like we're so, we hate each, we hate ourselves so much right now. Well, it's 60, it's 60, it's 60 years of, you know, higher education in the academy, indoctrinating people in hating this country. I mean, I hate to sound, you know, I think that plays a huge part in it. That plays a huge part of it. So that's my question.

How will we find the way, it's like, we don't see the glass as half empty. We see the glass. Let me also add something to no i think if a democrat had been president the past four years then there would also be a little more there would be some more pride in it the fact that this is in any way sort of it's still kind of connected to trump right you know he can maybe claim some kind of responsibility because he was president for most of this period when the vaccine was being developed. And as we know, that man, nothing good came of him. There's nothing good about him. You know, everything had to have been horrible and terrible. And so I think that also plays a role. So, but, and maybe you realize it,

but then I, what made me think of the vaccine just now was what you just described as the overnight seemingly melting away of this entire structure of anti-gay hatred in this country. Just this unbelievable turnaround, also something we should take enormous pride in. Yes. I mean, they're still throwing gays from rooftops in the countries around the world. How will we ever find perspective on ourselves to recognize how fortunate we are to be born in America and in 2021? My father used to say, and it's even truer now that if you had a lottery, like one of these things like a bingo thing and every soul that ever existed in planet earth, you'd want to be picked as an American in 2021, no matter what race, color, we won the lottery.

I think a huge part of it- You understand the question, right? How do we get it right? Without glossing over all the things we should be ashamed of and the rest. Well, the problem is that there's so much historical ignorance. And that, for instance,

I remember the leading gay rights group in this country, when Donald Trump was president, they were saying, Donald Trump is the worst president for LGBT people in the history of the United States. And that is just an absurd lie, like a crazy, and you don't need to be the guy who's written the book on the history of, you know, gay Washington. I don't think you need to be that guy to know it the book on the history of, you know, gay Washington. I don't think you need to be that guy to know it. I mean, you could just look at George W. Bush, right? In the federal marriage amendment, trying to ban gay marriage. And so I think there's just this historic, and it also applies, I think, too, with our discussion about race relations. And it seems

a lot of people speak as if, you know, race relations haven't improved in this country in the past 60 years. And that's just, that's also wrong. And I think people need to understand history more. And this is sort of a plug for my book, because if you read my book, you'll understand on the gay issue, at least, how far we have come. And that's not saying that we can't get better. Obviously, there's still homophobia, there's still bigotry in this country. But that doesn't mean that you can't appreciate how far we've come. And I would actually say, I think the reason we've come so far is unique to America. It's because of, for instance, our culture of free speech. I mean, the reason, one of the themes I discovered in my

book is that homophobia existed. And you would see gay people, homosexuals were associated with fascism during World War II, the Nazis. This is not just from the producers, the Mel Brooks movie. I found government documents where they were seriously speculating that Hitler's inner circle was this gay cabal. And then in the 1950s, homosexuality becomes associated with communism. And it's, you know, it's the communist homosexual. And the reason that these sorts of stereotypes are able to exist is because of the ignorance, because no one knew a homosexual. No one knew a homosexual in 1940 or 1950. So if they were just this sort of, this, you know, this, this sort of specter, this, this boogeyman, then you could come up with

any sort of lie about them and it would fit in the model. And then, but because we have a culture of free speech, at least we used to, then you can have something like the Mattachine Society, which is the first gay rights organization in the country. And they had a picket outside the White House in 1965. Not many people know this. Four years before the Stonewall Riot. And there's photos of these people in 1965, dressed in suits, most of them with sunglasses because they didn't want to be seen, holding signs that say very, and they modeled themselves off the African American civil rights movement.

They had signs that said, you know, civil rights for homosexuals. And they, there were 15 of them and they just marched in a circle. And believe me, there were people who were saying, these are sick, psychotic, crazy people. They shouldn't be allowed to do this. They're, you know, they're trying to recruit children and whatnot. But, you know, one thing led to another, and then you have organizations and then you have gay people going on television to talk about themselves and going on radio. And then you have books being written and movies and, you know, one thing, and then the more, the more, the more people learned about homosexuality, the less threatening it became. And so that, so I see civil rights and in racial harmony and peace and justice and love, that to me is all a function of free speech and inquiry and discussion and conversation. And it's doing what we're doing right now. And it's having conversations that can often be painful and very difficult, but you're not gonna get gay rights in this country, you're not gonna have civil rights

in this country without free speech. I mean, we were talking earlier about, I mean, you were just saying with Martin Luther King, he was a brilliant marketer and a brilliant strategist, but he wouldn't have been able to get that point across unless he had the First Amendment. Because believe me, there are plenty of people who said, these people shouldn't be allowed,

they're racial agitators, they shouldn't be allowed to do this. They are stirring up problems. And they said the same thing about gay rights activists. But because they were allowed to do these things, because they were allowed to engage in these conversations, that's how things got better. And I think you have to trust your fellow citizens. And that's such a problem right now is I think so many of our elites don't trust the populace. They think that if they hear these dangerous ideas, they hear, you know, if they hear Louis C.K. or if they hear, you know, Tom Cotton writing an op-ed for the New York Times that we don't like. And the list goes on and on, right?

If the people hear these dangerous ideas, then bad things will happen. And that is just something that I, you know, I just totally disagree with that attitude. I have more faith in my fellow citizens than a lot of other, you know, let's face it, I'm an elite, I guess, right? I, you know, I went to Yale, that makes me an elite. I'm writing a book. I think a lot of people in my class, right, sort of journalists, you know, creators, content people, there's a real gap between us and the masses, if you could say. Jamie, you mentioned freedom of speech as a key factor in, you know, the gay rights movement. I mean, can we, can we say that we've done better than other countries, you know, I mean, than the European countries, for example, you know, on that issue? Some of them achieved, you know,

gay marriage and gays in the military earlier than we did. A lot of it came sort of top down. So it wasn't necessarily through, you know, democratic means it was through courts, you know, courts ruling, court rulings as opposed to legislation. But it depends on the country. I mean, Germany only very recently got gay marriage, maybe a year or two ago, right? In Central and Eastern Europe, they're further behind on this. I think the Netherlands maybe was the first country to have civil unions in the late 1980s. But I mean, the United States,

in terms of the Western world, was certain. We were not at the tail end. I do want to just jump right back in before we go and just say, like, we're talking about 1965 and Martin Luther King. I just have to say this. I'm sorry. And, and, and voting rights and all the things where we are, we are not, we are there in 2020. There are the, the,

the right of black communities, communities of color to vote and have a say in the franchise. Like it's being, trying to be stripped away again. Yeah, but it's not as bad as it was in 1965. There aren't millions of people who can't,

literally are being prevented from entering the polls, right? We can agree on that. Maybe not millions yet, but wait till these, I mean, i'm just saying look at how many people are purged from voter rolls all these all these bills that are in all these state legislatures to to to to take away the voting rights and and you know of black folks in

the south because of what their power was able to do in the in the in the last election so you know a lot of things have changed and then we revert. And so it's not all progress. It's a lot of backward motions. You know, Aaron, I've always been kind of skeptical of some of that stuff. And then Vox did a study about the voter suppression law is not really having an effect.

But there was one thing I read not long ago where they were trying to ban voting on Sunday morning after church. Yeah, sold to the poll. Who the fuck is that? They're reducing the length of voting times. You know, they're taking away mail-in ballots. Anything that was used to win in a state that they decide that they should be able to win

just because. Anything other than actually adopting some policies that might change people's mind. It's, it's what can we do to suppress the black vote and make sure that they don't get out there. And you know what, you know what, Aaron, you might disagree with me. I've always thought that part of the part of the, the very notion that they thought these things would actually be effective was a little bit racist too. Like, do they really think black people can't get a picture

ID? Like, do they have such a low opinion of black? I know how we'll stop the black people. We'll make them get an ID. They'll never get it. It's so awful. It's because you're thinking of black people like you, right? You're thinking of black people who have access to the same thing that you have. And when you take away locations for people to vote, when you reduce the amount of, you know what I mean? Then people have to stand in line all day. The ID laws always killed me. I mean, I know black people,

you know black people better than I do, but they have driver's licenses. They buy liquor. They like, they get the IDs. Like, like it was something so. All I can say about this is. I know I'm a minority here. I just.

I've monitored, I've monitored elections in the former Soviet Union in Ukraine in Georgia the country in the last place I went was Moldova in Moldova you need two forms of ID to vote okay this is a former this is the poorest country in Europe it's a it's a former Soviet backwater. If they require two forms of ID in Moldova to vote, then I can't understand why we can't have some form of ID in the United States. That's just my layman's opinion. But Aaron, I will send you this article I read, which really made me, it might make you breathe easier about all this in Vox, because Vox is a

far left publication. And they kind of just came to the conclusion that a lot of this is much more alarmist, much more alarming on paper than it actually is in real life. But as I said, but the one that really got me was, it was naked, was trying to stop voting on Sunday morning. I mean, like they really, that was like pinpointing the time that black people would vote and try. And that was, that's just disgusting. I mean, how do these people live with themselves anyway? All right. This has been a great episode. Jamie's one of my favorite guests and I apologize.

I didn't get you on sooner after we talked about it. Don't think there was anything other than just being remiss. You live in DC. Yes. Okay. Well, when you're up in new york uh you know obviously stop by a comedy cellar will be well and half price on all food items great i love it 25 percent all right uh uh okay last aaron's show is uh we. What is it? They Ready. Mm-hmm. Plug it. Tiffany Haddish presents They Ready on Netflix Season 2. I'm Episode 2.

Check me out. I just went to a wedding. This was new for me. I went to a wedding where the groom in the couple was taking the bride's last name, right? And I was sitting there, and I thought, wow, that is very progressive of him, like very feminist. But, like, I thought also, like, I know for a fact that I don't want my future husband to be that progressive you know what i mean like i'm not judging their lives but like if i get married and my husband changes his last name to my last name like how will people know i got married you know like that i mean that's at my age that's like the whole point you

you get married you change your last name so people on Facebook know someone loves you. Now that's the whole thing. Like I, I wouldn't change my last name so bad when I get married that like if I married a dude whose last name was already Jackson, I would still hyphenate. I'd be like, no, no Jackson Jackson is not a type of. You know you see this ring. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day. Happy St. Patrick's Day insist on it. Okay, let's see if I can get it. This is... Can you guys see that? Yeah. All right, this is for... It's only a minute and 30 seconds.

Hi, my name's Manny, and I'm gonna be playing Danny Boy with my dad. Right over there. Okay. And a three. And a two. And a two. play a song called, happy saint patrick's day everybody happy saint patrick's day that's my boy that's great all right good night everybody thank you everybody. Happy St. Patrick's day. That's my boy. All right. Good night,

everybody. Thank you.